Now now, I don't think we can really jump down Captain Planet's throat for the concept. Sure, it was a pretty cheesy show, but it was made back when environmental awareness was the newest hip thing. Somebody saw a market and went for it, and I think it could have been worse.

The (Plain and) Simple Life. No point in elaboration.

Struggling to remember here, but wasn't The PJs an Eddie Murphy vehicle? That explains a good deal of the suckage right there.

I liked Wishbone and The PJs, and I guess this finally reveals me as the huge dork that I am. My recently departed box turtle Leo was named after the Ninja Turtle.

Wouldn't My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance just own this thread?

Currently in the UK they are showing Shattered, a new reality tv show where the contestants have to stay awake for a week or something. Possibly a bit shorter. The last person to go to sleep wins about £100000 or something.

Personally, I haven't been watching this, but what the hell are they showing? Just reams of videotape of people wandering about, trying to stay awake? Drinking extra strong coffee? I bet someone made up this idea whilst sitting outside a meeting room after a really bad night before.

I haven't seen "Shattered" - and probably wouldn't - but I imagine the producers would A)play tricks on the contestants, especially as they get more strung out from the lack of sleep and B)provide irritants to up the 'explosiveness' factor as the contestants get more and more high-strung, since they seem to be under the impression that reality show viewers love watching the contestants go ballistic on each other...

I just saw the promo for The Apprentice. A show where you watch someone try to get a job? In an office? And try to keep it? ...(snort)...(grunk)... Oh sorry. I fell asleep just thinking about it.

LOL..."Shattered" sounds hilarious! I was watching one of those "Shock Video" specials on HBO recently and they featured this show in Japan - basically, it's a house full of women who are crying nonstop to see who has cried the most. They even have little containers they carry around with them to collect and measure their tears and they constantly do things like chop onions and watch sappy movies to try to win. And in the end, they showed everyone in the house beating up the winner. Nice.

Something tells me a US version would not be far along...

My Mother the Car. Nuff said.

Emeril, the sitcom. Bad enough for any number of repeat mentions on this thread.

Apprentice is the first "reality" show since that island thing (which I haven't watched since that gay guy my age started walking around without any pants or underpants in the first go-round) that has sparked my interest. The reason? Two.

One, The Donald. The Giver of the Best Sex in the World (just ask him, and, well, his exes), the most egotistical man since Napoleon Bonaparte, funny, willing to see the self-parody even while living it seriously (if that makes sense), and actually a somewhat skillful business type.

Two, the kind of people the show will attract as contestants. It should be enormously entertaining to watch the ultimately competitive, merciless, backstabbing, selfish, egotistical, greedy folks, chosen just for that reason, try to chop each other into corned contestant hash. The backstabbing should exceed by at least three orders of magnitude that on any other "reality" show.

I anticipate many opportunities for huge guffaws.

But, of course, it all depends (duh!) on just how they do it.

This isn't really stupid as just kind of bizarre. While Simon Fuller and that guy who did America's Top Model fought it out over whether America would get to see The New Monkees or The New Partridge Family, the people who brought you Big Brother were hatching a plan...

Endemol is your new king

Who in the what now?

Shock Video, or the house of crying women? ;)

The house of crying women. I fear I may need to see this.

dearandgp, I'm totally with you on The Apprentice. The contestants should be at least book smart, too, to make it that much more interesting - no lame endurance challenges or fish destruction to distract from the mind games.

Vermicious Knid, I came to this thread to make that very point, but alas, you beat me to it. So 'me too' or something.

I must say that, although the idea sounds really lame and reality shows in general are very much played out now, "Shattered" is not that bad. In terms of the psychology involved, it is fascinating. After 100 hours of sleep deprivation, the contestents are now hulicinating, forgetting things and are becoming extremely paranoid and irritable - all of which are rather entertaining IMO. Besides its only on for a week. =)

Can anyone say "The Swan" as a show concept too stupid to believe. Also "I Want a Famous Face". Who would try out for the Swan? "Hey I heard you need ugly people, well take a look at me."

I was flipping around the channels last night and found something I absolutely could not believe. TVLand was running something in which a group of people were watching Friends on tv. That's it. That's the whole concept. The camera was pointed at a group of about 6 people who were sitting still except to occasionally laugh or grab a handfull of popcorn while they looked at an off-screen tv set. It was on for at least half an hour because I checked back a couple of times in morbid fascination. What the fuck was that?

That was TVLand throwing in the towel, because they knew everyone would be watching Friends, and not their station.

How about "Baby Bob?" A talking, snarky baby! Oh how this show sucked.

Are you kidding me? I hope they rerun this creepy friends watching Friends show! It should be good for a laugh!

Oh, my, you could make that into some kind of bizarre interactive installation art thing. Tape the "People Watching Friends", get the finale on DVD, run them on a picture-in-picture tv. Run simultaneously and let the pretentious art patrons decide whether the actual show or the people watching the show should be relegated to the tiny box. Hell, someone paid $869 for "Hollow Pussy".

Was it like MST3K, where they were snarking on it as it ran?

Because I'd probably watch that. Hell, the entire show has been much in need of snark for years now. Possibly since the beginning (if you're the unforgiving kind of TV watcher).

Was it English? It sounds a bit like The Royle Family, which involves a family (named Royle- get it?) who watch TV. Not just Friends, though. And I haven't seen it much, but one time I saw them visit the kitchen. So they move!

The "Friends Watching Friends" bit was a bit like when "The Tonight Show" went off the air, and Comedy Central ran no programming opposite him to honor the contributions he'd made to comedy. I can only suppose that TV Land was doing the same to honor the contributions they made to formulaic sitcoms.

I did catch it. Have to admit I was mildly drunk at the time, but I was fascinated by watching them watching the show. They all had perfectly straight faces, and occasionally chuckled. No huge belly laughs whenever I flipped over. Pretty much my reaction when I watched the actual show.

During the commercial breaks I would flip over to TV Land because I knew they were showing the cast in other roles, many of which I remember well - TWY and WTB. But whenever I did they had these people looking at TV which was obviously showing Friends. Was this only occuring during the commerical breaks or throughout the show?

Throughout the show. Like I said, it was supposed to be a "tribute" that they wouldn't run anything against it.

Heh. I remember a Mad Magazine article that had a fictional reality show called "American Idle," which was basically the same thing.

We have a new reality show starting this week in Oz called Miriam. Basically, a bunch of guys fight it out Bachelor-style for the affections of a hot girl, but what they don't know is that the she is actually a he. I am not joking. At the end of the series they get the guys together and tell them that for the last month (or whatever) they've been making out with and developing feelings for a man. Apparently all the guys involved sued the network and tried to prevent it from airing, but were unsuccessful. This has got to be one of the stupidest and most offensive show concepts ever IMO.

And I predict, with much sadness, that that show will land on American soil sooner than you'd think!

Last I heard, the show was titled "There's Something About Miriam." And Miriam wasn't a drag queen, but a pre-op transsexual who would, presumably, be getting the twig and berries cut off soon. Quite a difference.

CBS Unveils 5 Series With Familiar Stars.



This is a joke, right?

WB's Superstar USA. 'Nuff said.

Hee hee, "Dr. Vegas." Hee.

Something on another thread reminded me of Manimal. I think it ran about 6 episodes in 1980. There was a voiceover at the beginning that explained that the main character, independently wealthy had a hex put on him by a witchdoctor in deepest darkest africa so that he could change into any animal at will. He was always accidently running into crime/mysteries and using his special abilities as needed. As in, needs to get into a window, turns into a crow. It had the cheesiest pre-computer morphing a la Wolfen. I was about 10 when I saw this and remember turning to my dad and laughing at what an incredibly bad idea the whole thing was.

There was a Choose Your Own Adventure book just like that, titled You Are a Shark.

My nominations for terrible show concepts are as follows:

Pro-Stars A cartoon featuring Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, and Wayne Gretsky as superheroes or something. I love Wayne Gretsky, but why why why did he ever allow his name and likeness to be associated with the likes of this?

18 Wheels of Justice I only ever saw one episode of this, but I think it was about some truck driver whose family got killed or something, so he started fighting crime to avenge them or something. In his 18-wheel truck.

Most Extreme Elimination Challenge This is quite possibly one of the dumbest shows ever. And yet it's mesmerizingly hilarious.

Thank you for making me laugh so hard! I don't know why, but this title just strikes me as real hilarious and lazy on the author's part. You seriously couldn't think of a better title, man? It couldn't be like "Voyage to the Shark Infested Waters of Some Creepy Place (Oh, By the Way, YOU Will Actually Be One of the Sharks!)"? LAZY!

So is he saying he doesn't think it's going to do well? Because who says "what could go wrong with that?" unless they're being sarcastic?

I hope it does well, if only to keep Sarah Lancaster away from Everwood.

Beyblade. We get to watch kids battle it out with spinning. Tops. Spinning tops.

Passions. Yet I cannot turn away.

The Smartest Kid in America
I think that was what it was called...a "Who Wants to be a Millionare" type show where they took 100 prepubescent supergeniuses and whoever could answer the most trivia questions correctly won and got to be the Smartest Kid in America (the winner's lifelong dream was to be a bio-genetic something).

Considering I was seven when I watched it and even I knew lots of the answers to the questions, I come to the conclusion that it eventually came out to be "Who Can Click the Right Answer Button Fastest?"

And kid exploitation? Ew.

Perchance, was this show on Fox?

Months ago in this thread, I badmouthed "My Mother the Car." Now that I've actually seen it (because I finally have the Trio network, which is showing it all this month), I think a lot of its reputation is undeserved. It's certainly no worse than most of the other dozens of gimmicky sitcoms that populated the airwaves in the 1960s. And the opening credits have the theme song lyrics in a sing-along "bouncing ball" style!

Why is this suddenly the funniest thing I ever read?

Topic? Who needs a topic?

Oh god, they made Raising Helen into a sitcom.

It's actually called dr. vegas. Because the capital-letters-suck thing did so well for girls club, I guess.

Oh god, its worse, its actually DRAMA.

Lori Laughlin (of Full House fame) is a fashion designer wannabe with best friend partner (they should have made them a lesbian couple) who is the "fun aunt" which we establish because they tell us she is the "fun aunt". Her sister and sis's husband get swept away by a river. She takes the kids back to live in a beachhouse dump with all her friends. They all learn lessons in growing up.

And it truly sucks. Kind of 7th Heaven meets Little House meets Gidget. The recaps might be funny, there are lots of snarkworthy moments.